Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

Haven't finished it yet, but wow... Haven't felt so excited since playing War in Heaven. Great job, Diaspora team! It's not only the best BSG game, it's also one solid piece of a space-sim. This and Wing Commander Saga make me feel like it's early Christmas

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

Just downloaded on my laptop and played, with a mouse, on the advice of a friend. AWESOME WORK. Will fly tonight at home with a real stick/rudder/throttle and FreeTrack.

One question: What's necessary to get TrackIR enabled? Do I need to download the DLL as mentioned elsewhere, or is that packed in the installer? I guess I'll just try it and see what happens and go from there..

Also one comment: I don't suppose we'll ever get self-shadowing in the cockpits? They feel much "brighter" than the darker ambiance of what little we saw in-cockpit during the TV series. I realize it's probably not technically plausible with the FS2 engine, though. Things like RTT instruments are already pretty awesome, so take this as a "wow wouldn't it be nice if" rather than a "boo, hiss, this thing you are giving me for free is not perfect, pardon me while I have a temper tantrum."

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

Congratulations to all involved. It's one thing to start a promising project, but it's quite a different matter to see it through and spend the extra time polishing it before the final release. I don't think enough people realise how much time and effort go into these projects before they culminate in a release.

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

Rearming by flying through the hangar works in a gamey-sense but not a BSG sense.

WHAT? I did not even knew that? Seriously, that works? Since the game was perfectly playable on "Advanced"/Medium without knowing that, I assume you can axe it. Never entered a hangar other than to launch or to land. By the way, that hangar interior is probably the only ugly texture ingame...

Forgot to mention that I LOVED THE NEW HUD and target lead indicator :-)

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

You wake up one morning and instead of blood your heart will be pumping only awesome.

Though I'm curious; the music is very underplayed, here. I haven't poked the volume settings at all so I'm curious why I'm not listening to it at higher volume that would be comparable to the volume the show usually played its music at. Uncontrollable defaults? Imported FS2 settings?

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

You wake up one morning and instead of blood your heart will be pumping only awesome.

Though I'm curious; the music is very underplayed, here. I haven't poked the volume settings at all so I'm curious why I'm not listening to it at higher volume that would be comparable to the volume the show usually played its music at. Uncontrollable defaults? Imported FS2 settings?

Music was intentionally muted, but the volume controls are there for a reason. I use them liberally and to good effect.

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

I usually find these kind of games a bit too confusing for my tastes. I managed to dumb down most of the controls onto my Xbox 360 controller (Triggers acceleration, shoulder buttons next/previous target, D-pad thrusters, A fire, X missiles, B countermeasures, Y afterburner, left click auto-target on/off, right click thumbs up) and play it on easy (because I suck at these, and realised I was missing a lot of control funtions.

And I loved it. It fits in really well with the BGS universe, and I was surprised about a couple of choises you can make as a player, in particular the Prometheus in the final mission - that felt exactly like something that would be written for the show.

The looks are also spot-on, especially how the Battlestar and Basestars are positioned, the way they fire and the missile/slug/explision field. The Vipers and Raptors feel brilliant, too.

My only complaint (and I'm not sure if anything could be done with this) is targeting mission-critical targets (the ones you have objectives for), and it seems like something which can be a pain even the full controls. If there was a way for the auto targeting to prioritise these, it would be great. Still, it's a minor complaint.

Anyway, brilliant work. I'm going to play through a few more times and I look forward to more missions.

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

Rearming by flying through the hangar works in a gamey-sense but not a BSG sense.

WHAT? I did not even knew that? Seriously, that works? Since the game was perfectly playable on "Advanced"/Medium without knowing that, I assume you can axe it. Never entered a hangar other than to launch or to land. By the way, that hangar interior is probably the only ugly texture ingame...

Forgot to mention that I LOVED THE NEW HUD and target lead indicator :-)

No, that is not a feature since it isn't something that feels like BSG and the whole limited resources deal.

Re: [RELEASE] Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

And this, right here, is exactly why I say that mods are good for the IP holder. All over the world you've got people getting fired up about BSG again, and people who like flight sims but never watched BSG deciding that maybe they missed out and need to go to iTunes or Hulu or whatever and get hold of the episodes. Hell, maybe we've even shown Syfy that there's a big demand for BSG, big enough to finally release Blood and Chrome.